27August1997

27 August 1997
My dear folks,

Where to start, I wonder? Maybe with Gabriel Faure’s Requiem, if only because it’s hauntingly beautiful & sounding all around me. This is my hard afternoon, the turn-around after 5 nights on the trot, although I’ve nothing harder to cope with than a great weight of lethargy & disinclination to do anything. Little tasks demand a disproportionately big effort. I suspect that depression must carry with it something of the same burden of torpor – not that I’m in the least depressed, merely short of sleep.

They were fairly easy nights. I cycled in each evening, taking long detours on Sunday & Monday to get around the throbbing Notting Hill Carnival. The streets were double-parked, the pavements crawling with revellers & the traffic going nowhere. Bicycle was the only viable means of transport & I was grateful for it. The weather gods responded to my prayers for a good downpour on Monday but their timing was ill. It was raining so hard when I emerged from the office at 0645 that I at first tried to hail a cab. After 30 fruitless minutes, with the rain easing off, I reverted to the bike. All the approach roads to the carnival route were still semi-closed & guarded by damp policemen. One ushered me through – cyclists were plainly welcome - & I offered him my sympathies. Quite unnecessary, he responded, indicating that the rain was welcome & the more the better.

However, our combined supplications were ignored by the gods who blew away the clouds & gave the crowds a perfect day. I was glad to be working again that night. By the time I returned home on the Tuesday a.m. the streets were dead except for the army of cleaners tackling the Augean trail of litter. Some unhappy soul had decorated a portaloo with a graffito urging us to “fuck the police”, but by all accounts the carnival passed off peacefully enough. Tranquillity has returned for another year.

The rain also returned today. Great battalions of showers are moving across the country & due to soak most of us intermittently for the next few days – although the sun has popped out just for the moment. At least the enervating humidity of the past fortnight has finally given way to some fresh air. The fans have stopped whirling in the study & the bedroom for the moment & I have ceased taking cold showers. After watching a rather feeble (early) episode of Columbo & downing some strong black coffee, I took myself down to the corner café for brown bread & low fat yoghurt & then to the greengrocer to replenish my stocks of fruit. Mavis, who has been largely absent from the flat these past few days, is back. I have been trying to put him on diet with little to show for my efforts. The fat feline cleans his bowl the moment I fill it & then stands by it with quivering tail & piteous squeaks begging for more.

The silly season nears an end. The media concerns itself with whether Di really did call the last government’s policy on landmines hopeless in an interview with Le Monde – as she surely did but must now deny. And what is to come of the Oprah Winfrey mad cow episode & forthcoming court case? Totsiens Mr De Klerk, retiring to write his autobiography. BBC World at least acknowledged his ambiguous place in history. I listened with interest to a tribute of kinds to him from Donald Woods who thought he’d earned his Nobel Peace Prize at least as much as Kissinger & Begin. My thanks to Jones for her faxes & to Fregs & Judy for email updates. All welcome. (Jones, the Warrens wonder whether you found a film cartridge anywhere when you were cleaning the cottage after their departure.)

Blessings
T